Word: bereft
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such lapses are comparatively minor in an ambitious, magisterial and ultimately positive book. For Johnson demonstrates that Christianity, though it certainly caused enough bloodletting, did help tame the human beast, did offer hope in a landscape of despair. "Without these restraints, bereft of these encouragements," he concludes, "how much more horrific the history of these last 2,000 years must have been!" Given Johnson's grim recital of human frailty, that may seem more like faith than history. But, as he disturbingly observes, the first glimpses of a deChristianized secular future are most dismal indeed...
Tunnelvision, which has its East Coast premiere at the Orson Welles this week and which purports to be a hot, hip parody of the cool medium, falls on its face because it never escapes what it tries to make funny. Bereft of originality, the film, set in 1985, tries to keep the laffs coming with a tiring and finally irritating stream of take-offs of TV just the way it is today. L.A. crime dramas get the treatment with "Police Comic," a one-minute bit in which a stand-up joking cop makes the bad guy give up with...
...CONSERVATIVE production by G & S criteria, The Yeomen of the Guard is happily bereft of the gimmickry and contemporary updating that characterized recent versions of the more popular Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore; the audience's relative unfamiliarity with Yeomen has allowed director John Campbell Butman to forswear innovation, since whatever happens on stage will be new. Butman also abandons much of the elaborate stylization which shaped the performances in this fall's production of Iolanthe, encouraging his leads to act with greater naturalism and leaving the contorting and caricaturing to the lesser characters...
Each member of the troupe of black actors, bereft of the necessary direction, compensates by latching onto one emotion that he is confident he can do well. Silvia Anglin (Felicity) clings to her range, Corliss Blount (Snow) to her bitterness. Felipe Noguera turns in a good performance as Archibald, staring at members of the audience with a fierce, chilling concentration. Rod Clark renders a marvelously subtle Diouf; his mask segments are precise and perfect. Michael Russell (Village) deals well with the most difficult part in the play; his character is almost totally reliant on feedback from others and the quality...
...incidents. There is at least one such here. Split with his girl friend, his wife and sons away on unannounced holiday, Nicholas shacks up with his co-star in a new play. As she prattles on in bed, telling endless postcoital anecdotes about her grandmother, Mastroianni stares straight ahead, bereft, bored, glazed, luckless, irked, satisfied but uncompelled, paying dearly now for his pleasure. It is a scene Mastroianni manages with the kind of comic melancholy that comes from depths too seldom sounded...